Civil service reforms needed

GEORGE Bernard Shaw said, “I am afraid we must make the world
honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the
best policy.” The same can be said in light of last week’s elections.

Civil servants are of the essence in terms of fair elections. In an
article published in this space last week, the very experienced former
civil servant Kunwar Idris said that “woefully, the standards both of
personal ethics and commitment to a code of conduct among officials have
been steadily declining because the principle of merit has been
progressively abandoned in their recruitment, placement and promotion”.

I would like to take the argument to the next level and propose an
out-of-the-box solution to inculcate institutional integrity in the
civil service. But before that, a brief history of the politicisation of
Pakistan’s civil service.

From 1947 to 1971 the civilian bureaucracy was largely independent
and the politicians had hardly any influence. The constitutions of 1956,
1962 and the interim constitution of 1972 provided safeguards for civil
servants against dismissals, demotions or compulsory retirements on
political or nepotistic grounds. The bureaucracy, particularly the elite
Civil Service of Pakistan, maintained its integrity and institutional
autonomy by virtue of reasonable control over the selection, training
and posting of its members.

The downfall of Ayub Khan and the rise of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,
however, gave the political class an opportunity to assert its power.
Once the eastern half of the country seceded, the military and the civil
bureaucracy were left severely discredited. The former managed to hold
its own owing to the nature of the institution, but the structure of the
civil bureaucracy was turned upside down.

Bhutto decided to redress the power imbalance between the elected and
unelected institutions of the state by withdrawing constitutional
protections for civil servants in the 1973 Constitution. The seeds of
political influence in the functioning of the permanent executive of the
country were sown and political manipulation became a norm.

The civil bureaucracy became even more complacent when, instead of
rebuilding the system, subsequent military regimes eroded it further
through measures such as large-scale inductions from the military and
showed a general distrust for civil servants. Over time, bureaucrats
lost the plot altogether and became the most obedient servants of the
rulers or rulers-in-waiting instead of the state; they became puppets in
the hands of the rulers, military and political.

Can the problem now be reversed? The best bet under the present
circumstances would be to provide the civil service with a nucleus — a
godfather, so to speak — that each pillar pivotal to the governance of
the state of Pakistan already has.

The Pakistan Army as an institution always has a patron in the form
of the army chief. The office of the chief justice of the Supreme Court
of Pakistan has seen a meteoric rise in stature and this ascent has been
institutional rather than on an individual level.

The political executive and legislature is on track and towering
leaders will emerge in due course. The media, by virtue of matchless
influence in forming public opinion, is its own godfather. This leaves
the civil service as practically the only institution that lacks
direction and strength of purpose. The only way to provide the requisite
strength to this pillar of state is by allowing for a ‘chief’ of the
civil service. The incumbent to such office would be appointed for a
fixed term protected by the Constitution, neither extendable nor
terminable.

The establishment division of the cabinet secretariat might claim to
be performing a similar function already, but events such as someone as
senior as the establishment secretary being made ‘officer on special
deputation’ overnight or succumbing to political pressures to allow
illegal inductions in the civil service leave little merit to that
claim.

With a chief of the civil services, nobody — not even the sitting
prime minister or one in waiting — would be able to influence him for
administrative matters such as appointments, transfers, postings and
recruitments. This would provide unflinching resolve for civil servants
in taking decisions without pressure.

But there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, one being the
requirement of a constitutional amendment for the setting-up of such an
office. All the political parties promised change in the build-up to the
elections; the question is, once in the driver’s seat will they remain
committed to real change or settle on a cosmetic one? Also, can an
opposition that promises to be real push through some real change?

Such measures, being far from public focus, might not bring new votes
and would actually block the way of bogus ones. Yet they would be the
vanguard of the real change people so richly deserve for showing their
faith in democracy by coming out to vote. The suggested change in the
structure of the civil service is akin to keeping an endangered species
in protective custody until it’s strong enough to survive in the wild:
there’s no doubt that the ‘most obedient servant of the state’ is an
endangered species.